Page 218 of Silver Sweet

Jane nods back, then exits with the monitor in hand, leaving a trail of loose white feathers behind.

Audrey scratches at dried wine on her neck. “You don’t have to babysit me. Because I’m not a baby.”

Charlie lets out a pained laugh into a shorter drag. He blows smoke at Audrey. She wafts the air while he tells her, “And what happens if we never showed up at the frat house,little sister?” His lip curls as he stares her down. “You are only standing here because Beckett had Narcan in his car.”

“I know?—”

“You were incapacitated in a basement alone with only fraternity brothers around. Do you know, Audrey?Really?”

I feel sick to my stomach, regretting the wine churning inside me.

“Of course, I know the dangers of being a woman around unthinking, immoral, disgusting men,” she retorts. “I know it better than you.”

“I’m sure you believe you know everything better than I do. You’re so smart, so well-equipped to face people who will manipulate and take and screw you until you can’t fucking stand?—”

“Dude,” I cut in, about to upchuck on the table. “Can we not?”

Charlie is trying to rattle her.

Audrey stands taller than before to say, “I have armor.”

He snuffs the cigarette on the plate. “You have been sheltered—by all of us—your entire life. We’ve made your armor.”

“Brother,” Eliot warns, not wanting him to destroy it.

Her eyes glass. “That is precisely why I’d prefer to live with you.” She looks from me, to Eliot, to Charlie. “I can’t deny you’re the manufacturers of my arsenal and the pillows that catch myfalls. I can’t pretend not to love that you are, and maybe it’s selfish of me to want the strength and shelter you provide. But I want it, and it’s rather humiliating that I need to beg you to give it.”

“We’vealwaysgiven it,” Charlie says sharply. “When have we ever taken it from you?”

“You’re about to.”

I lace my hands behind my strained neck. How do I not look after my sister if she’s in New York? That’s like asking us not to care about her. Which is asking me not to breathe.

But Ben.

Ben.

“The timing.Ben,” I say to my sister. “I’m trying to look out for him.”

“We can look after both,” Eliot says with the squeeze of my shoulder.

Can we really? We’ve been able to afford to live inside the belief that we can handle everything—but I don’t want to overpromise when the cost is one of our siblings.

“Ben could warm up to the idea,” Audrey tells me. “And we don’t have to decide right away. I don’t graduate until the end of the year. I bet once the alarm wears off, Ben will want me to live with him, too.”

Okay, yeah, maybe.“We’ll see,” I say, still struggling to accept she’ll be attending college in January.

She’ll be in New York regardless of what we decide.

I lower to my seat. “I’m sending all my therapy bills to you this month, Audrey Virginia.”

“I will happily pay them.” She sits down.

I can’t even make a quip about bribery. The door blows open. Mom and Jane return to assure us that Ben is okay. We’ll be resuming opening remarks soon.

We all try to eat while we wait. I push around a green bean with my fork.

Audrey will be fine in the dorms, right? We can check in on her from afar. It might not be exactly what she wants, but it’s not the worst situation in the world.